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"IBM's grasp of the future market and the technology demands of digital media is far beyond that of its competitors," said Loren Johnson, Frost & Sullivan industry analyst. "Its focus on business analytics combined with in-depth industry expertise and a corporate vision dedicated to creating a smarter planet sets it apart."

IBM focuses on a number of strategies to meet the needs of the digital media industry. IBM has developed a cohesive Media Enterprise Framework that embraces open standards and is focused on helping media firms to continue the transformation from analog products and physical distribution to digital offerings and network distribution.

This framework allows IBM to tap the breadth and depth of its core technologies, open architectures, and customer-centric services from across the company to offer tailored solutions to its digital media customers. Its ability to harvest tangible and re-usable assets out of the engagements combined with its global go-to-market capabilities enables IBM to deliver superior returns to its clients' key initiatives

In addition, IBM's focus on extending its core software platforms while successfully executing a number of important acquisitions has enabled it to develop a unique and deep set of capabilities. Its recent acquisitions of industry-defining technology leaders such as SPSS, Netezza, Coremetrics, iLOG, Sterling Commerce and Unica will empower its customers with unprecedented business analytics, measurement, and performance improvement capabilities. Media customers can use the full range of IBM business analytics tools to measure performance, interpret data, generate insights and make real-time informed decisions.

"Unlike virtually all of its competitors, IBM offers a broad range of hardware, software and service solutions, all of which target critical media business issues," notes Johnson. "Specific initiatives may depend on individual company needs, but IBM can draw on its native resources as no other vendor can."

"IBM has also cultivated an extensive set of business partnerships second to none in the technology space," says Johnson. "The structure and foundation of IBM solution architecture allows for the simple integration of many complementary and value-add applications and solutions its partners provide. This allows IBM – through its own solutions and its partnerships – to provide one-stop-shop solutions for virtually any media technology need."

An example of of IBM's long standing involvement in developing key enabling technologies for the industry are IBM's important innovations in security and broadcast encryption technologies. These approaches allow content to be securely distributed on media such as SD cards, memory sticks, and other solid state hardware. Such technologies have helped enable the digital revolution within the content space by allowing for content protection and content security through devices and platforms, and have been extended into consumer devices such as blue-ray players.

IBM's development of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) for the media industry, which identifies 11 different digital workflow processes and standardized the interfaces, workflows and integration technologies, is also noteworthy. SOA has accelerated the integration of technologies, the capacity for standard APIs and connectors, and the ability of media companies to upgrade systems and tools within these processes and products simply and easily.

For digital media file management, the development of the Long Term File System (LTFS) allows media companies to tag, store, retrieve, and archive content. In effect, this solution can enable content categorization and indexing, hierarchical storage management, and automated retrieval, all imbedded into the physical data-tape itself. For those companies still straddling the traditional world of physical assets while moving toward digital assets, such file management systems represent a confluence of tools, processes, and systems into a singular asset management solution.

Overall, very few solution providers can work at the same scale, depth, breadth and capabilities as IBM. It is a proven industry pioneer with a unique, defined perspective of the media and entertainment marketplace, and its vision and competitive strategies will enable it to continue defining innovation across the digital media industry for many years. In recognition of these achievements it is the worthy recipient of the 2010 Global Frost & Sullivan Award for Company of the Year in the digital media market.

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated great growth strategies and implementation. The award lauds the recipient's innovation in business processes, products and/or technologies to garner leadership in customer value and market penetration.

"We are honored by the market recognition from Frost & Sullivan," said Steve Canepa, general manager, IBM Global Media & Entertainment industry. "It is a great acknowledgement of our mission to bring substantive innovation and meaningful value to our clients, and also highlights the overall transformation of the media and entertainment industry as it embraces increasingly interconnected and intelligent solutions."

Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About IBM
For more information on IBM, visit ibm.com/.

About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan (frost.com), the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best-practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages 50 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from more than 40 offices on six continents.

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